A Year without Summer, directed and choreographed by Florentina Holzinger, premiered on 21 May 2025 at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, featuring an all cis-female, naked cast—Holzinger’s signature—who display a range of diverse and at times visceral talents.
Before the performance, I ask a person sitting next to me if they know how long the show is.
“Two hours,” they answer.
“That’s a bit long,” I say.
“But it’s gonna be good,” they reply.
“I hope so,” I say as I turn my gaze away.A Year without Summer presents many eye-catching scenes, such as a tender orgy and an aerial pole dance. They move at a fast pace, packed with loud music (mostly performed by live musicians on stage), stunt acts, extravagant props, sensory stimulation, and sarcasm. Though I struggle at times to find a through line in the piece, one theme that persists throughout is horror stories that humanity has brought upon itself.
In one scene, Achan Malonda sings about being in love with her racist therapist because he prescribes the pills she needs. When she sings “These are a few of my favorite pills”—substituting “pills” for “things” in the well-known song from The Sound of Music—the audience bursts into laughter. The scene continues merrily as Malonda sings about her addiction, ending with a chorus of performers singing, “Use may be fatal.”
Later, Malonda portrays Georges Cuvier, a French scientist known for dissecting and preserving body parts of Sarah Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus.” Witnessing a Black performer use derogatory terms about Black people and make dramatic gestures to carve out her own vagina, which she then places in a jar, evokes discomfort in me at watching someone degrade and violate their own community. My unease rises even more as the audience—mainly white—laughs on.
The performance touches on many other modern tragedies, such as depression and fear of aging, and depicts extreme ways people act to alleviate their dread. Audience members continue to clap and laugh at these scenes, as if laughing at themselves.
The final scene, which continues as the audience leaves the theatre, features a solo figure skating on a high pedestal. It’s as if the skater represents a beacon of beauty: A youthful, white person with short blond hair and lean, toned body executing majestic and graceful movements. I think back to the many scenes in the performance dedicated to the attempts to defy aging and reach immortality. Is the skater the ultimate human being to aspire to? I notice the occasional pretense of failure performed by the skater as they carry out marvelous tricks, and reflect on humanity’s struggle to achieve “the impossible” despite repeated failures.
Looking at the fake and odorless puke and poop—an aftermath of the show—flooding the stage as I leave, I wonder if this mirrors a big mess created by humans often just so that we can look at it or get a small respite from our distress. When does it all stop being “fun” anymore? I think back to my pre-show exchange with my neighbor in the audience, and question what they could have meant by “good.” Does excessive, expensive, and extreme equal “good”? Or to have the chance to look at our absurdities and laugh at them? I walk out of the theatre with a feeling of having watched a splatter that is supposed to be really fun, but actually isn’t.
A Year without Summer, by Florentina Holzinger, premiered on 21 May 2025 at Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz. Further performances will be shown 7–9 June 2025.
